Italian plumber

Hello all, I'm considering buying a brushed Vantage 2.0 for bashing onroad or light off-road. I don't have time to read the whole topic and I didn't find a way to sort replies by "likes" or such. Can someone regular to this topic summarise the most common isues that this buggy has?

You're right about the motor, it's too close to the front output shaft. I just wasted 5 pounds for a 12T pinion and a mount to mod ☹️ How about higher turns motor? I can't see 15T working offroad with the 17T pinion and stock wheels, but maybe adding a 21T motor has a similar effect to adding a smaller pinion. EDIT: I just noticed you went up to 35T and they just melt? Did you put a cooling heatsink and fan in place, adding thermal grease? That's my plan for the 15T. I don't really like sensorless brushless. The stock ESC and Brushless system (Etronix Photon 2.1w 45 amp ESC + Etronix 4 pole 2950Kv motor) has a minimum speed of 2000 RPM. Lower than that, it shuts down. This means quite a punch at startup and when releasing the throttle. The brushed motor fluidly delivers torque from 0 RPM. It's fantastic but limited to onroad as it is now. I wish there was a better ESC for sensorless RC cars, like the VESC project does for electric bikes.

I didn't experience that at all, both with 2S and 3S. Motor hot to the touch but not too much. I also tried with smaller wheels and it's super fun! Obviously it lacks the hard punch of brushless but it's much more fluid and driveable. This by driving it in a parking lot. For offroad I'll put the brushless motor back. Actually it's too fast on 3S so I'll see if I can build a motor mount for a 13T pinion instead of the 17T. It should be a mod 0.6 gear. @RedbackI've seen your topic on gearing the Outlaw with the GMade gearbox but I don't find myself comfortable doing such an extensive mod. Was there a reason why you didn't try modding the motor mount?

I bought a brushed system in the end. FTX 550 15T + Hobbywing 1060. It's much more fluid and I can drive it inside the house. Will see how it is outside, when it stops raining.

@RedbackI sensorless is out of reach at the moment for me. If I swapped the photon ESC with a Hobbywing 10BL60 do you think it would be better at handling low RPM? I don't want a crawler but at least being able to extract some more power at low RPM. I also forgot to mention that I'm running it on smaller wheels, about 2/3 of the original wheels diameter.

Punch and timing already set to low with the programmer. It still gives a "kick" when starting, likely eating away spur, pinion and diffs a bit every time. About using a sensored brushless, I thought of it but there is another scenario where I think it won't work. When cornering and releasing the throttle, there is a point from which torque from the motor disappears, instead of tapering down to zero, and this causes a sudden weight shift that topples it on its roof. A sensored motor helps the ESC sense the rotation when the motor is starting, but it shouldn't make a difference when the motor is already rotating. I'm starting to think the Photon 2.1w ESC is hardwired to have that dead zone around neutral.

My brushless Outlaw is unable to go at walking speed. When I start pulling the throttle trigger, nothing happens for the first millimeters of travel, and then it zooms at about 1/4 throttle. Pulling further makes it go up to 100% throttle. Is that common? It's inconvenient when walking it. I tried programming the "neutral range" parameter on the ESC to the lowest, which is 2%, but it doesn't do much. Also I put the throttle trim to 0 and calibrated the endpoints. Adjusting the trim just makes the trigger more responsive, but it's always going from nothing to about 1/4 power without control in between.

Hello all, while trying to understand a gap in the throttle response around neutral on my FTX Outlaw, I tried again to recalibrate the throttle. Reading the instruction, I just noticed that they say to set the throttle channel to REV. I've always ran it with throttle set to NORMAL. Am I the only one having missed this?

I'm really eyeing a TRX-4 and mouth watering on it, but in these times of economic crisis it seems hard to spend a month's rent on what is a toy. Would find hard to justify to my partner as well. For the time being I found a solution, since I had already a wheel with shifter and pedals I bought Mudrunner and Pure Rock Crawling for 30 pounds total. Plenty of fun for the last two days with Mudrunner, the other game is unfinished so it was a waste of money. Should have satisfied my rock and mud needs for now.

Yeah, one alternative was to buy an FTX Outback crawler and set up some dirt in the backyard to crawl on

I found this Absima 1/14 Sand Buggy which looks like it has a fair ground clearance (40mm). https://www.modelsport.co.uk/absima-1-14-high-speed-sand-buggy/rc-car-products/1332818 Unfortunately I couldn't find any youtube videos on that 🤔

Would you think the Ion struggled on grass? I don't know whether to buy a 1/10 and just go to a nearby public park, or go smaller with a 1/18 but deal with the higher friction of grass 🤔 A 1/10 like the FTX Outlaw would deal with taller grass surely better, but I feel it's too large for my backyard. Ground clearance on the Ion is quite low, about one inch.

Thank you! The plumber reference is not to my job, but to a famous videogame character 😉 which is also my name

I've recently moved to a house with a sizeable backyard of about 25 x 25 ft (about 600 sqft). I have already a SCX24 which I was using indoors, but I'd like to do some bashing with a buggy during lockdown. Is a 1/10 buggy too big? I was eyeing the FTX Outlaw. Or better 1/18, like a Maverick Ion DT?

Hi everyone, I'm an Italian expat living in Manchester and got bitten by the RC cars bug a few weeks ago. Nice to meet you all!